District 9 far from Croydon
by Tangerine-Alert
Summary: The Fourth Doctor returns to Earth to find aliens there, forbidden to interfere he meets with an old friend.


_Notice: Doctor Who and District 9 and their concepts belong to their respective copyright holders, I do not claim any ownership of their concepts I'm just messing around in their universes._

The Doctor looked out across the wide land, smelling the sky, looking out and what he saw sickened him.

_Humans_ and their first contact with aliens, the first noticeable contact with aliens, aliens that didn't want to take over, didn't want to enslave they came in peace seeking help, their ship stalled over one of the larger landmasses and now…this.

-/

20 years, a brief blip as far as a Time Lord is concerned. A Time Lord is eternal, this was…nothing as far as the Time Lords were concerned.

They'd forbidden him from interfering after he'd stopped the Master for them and everything.

* * *

Sarah checked the rear view mirror, again to make sure she wasn't being followed, despite K9's presence in the back seat and his constant scans for cars and helicopters following her.

"Still nothing K9?" She said as she turned onto the next road, K9 was also giving her directions. Following the Artron energy source he'd detected this morning.

"Negative Mistress. Artron source still static."

"Is it him? Is it the Doctor?" She asked herself, she had asked K9 that question when he'd detected it. He'd been quite sure.

"Psycho-spores suggest it is the Doctor-Master. Artron energy leakage is consistent with the Doctor-Master's TARDIS."

"That's good K9." Sarah said. "We don't want a repeat of 2002." She continued to muse to herself. She'd been asked to assist UNIT with that, their job was now everything _excluding_ the aliens here and when blokes turn up in Monk costumes who have 2 hearts on medical scanners people start asking questions. He'd managed to cause a lot of damage before UNIT removed him.

Turning off the sealed road onto an even rougher road she looked around the landscape. There was nothing for kilometers. The Doctor had chose a remote spot, with a good view of the alien spacecraft. Though there were few places that you couldn't gaze upon them.

"No hostiles within range Mistress." K9 said breaking into her thoughts and her hazard check of the surrounding.

"Good K9." She wasn't sure how she'd have survived without K9. A gift from the Doctor back in the 80s. Brendan hadn't been able to make head or tale of what technology was inside K9.

But the slightly chunky design betrayed what he could actually do. His hover ability especially she was thankful, because when she'd actually had to lift him. Like when the Cybermen had got into the sewers in the late 80s he'd been zapped with high tension power cables she'd had to pick him up. He wasn't impossibly heavy, but she was glad he could cope with all surfaces.

He also had something called a 'perception filter' which stopped people seeing him, but not so much that made him invisible.

But his ability to be a camera and recording equipment made her job a lot simpler and what she could offer her media partners was superior to others.

Plus he could disable, or as she'd found _kill_ hostiles was good, although she'd been somewhat worried the first time it'd happened, but it was good to know she was covered. It had meant she'd gotten several exclusives that a media crew with security would never have been able to achieve.

* * *

As she drove up she saw him, a man, if that was how you could describe a _Gallifreyan_.

He was standing on a small hill looking out at the spacecraft. That infernal blue box, his TARDIS was a short distance from him. His scarf was flapping in the breeze.

Stopping the car she got out, she needn't open the door for K9, he could do it through some manipulation of magnetic fields or something. She only paused as she got out to issue instructions to K9. "Perform a localised sweep of the area, standard parameters. Disable anything nasty and then join us."

"Yes Mistress." K9 acknowledged as she heard the door unlock and K9's hover-mode engage as he hovered out of the Land Rover.

* * *

"Hello Sarah Jane." He said solemnly, he'd heard the car driving towards him for the past hour, despite the noise of helicopters, the screeching and scratching of humans and the 'prawns' such a _human_ name for them.

-/

Then his view was taken up by her face and a hug; that was unexpected, as was the firm and with meaning punch on the arm.

"That wasn't Croydon!" She exclaimed.

"Sarah Jane Smith. You've changed."

"You haven't Doctor." She smiled. She was wearing a press marked protective vest, with he noted a semi-automatic pistol strapped to her thigh.

She followed his gaze.

"I know Doctor you don't approve of weapons. But this is for protection."

"From the aliens Sarah?" He asked, returning his gaze to the hovering spacecraft.

"From the humans." She said seriously. She turned to lean as the Doctor was against the TARDIS in the shade it was casting, despite it being the wrong side for the shade to be casting along it seemed it was bending it around to over them.

"Doctor did you know about this…about how this would happen?" She asked curiously.

"Did I Sarah?" The Doctor paused. "No. The Time Lords also forbade me from _interfering_."

"But would you?" She pressed.

"Would I what?"

"Like you did with the Daleks, go back, try and stop it happening." It felt so odd to speak of them now, with the Doctor.

"Perhaps." He mused.

"Perimeter clear Mistress. No hostiles within range." He looked down at the robot, it was clearly 50th century technology, though the particular hum of the anti-gravitation devices were from a totally different century.

"Thank you K9." Sarah said.

"Mistress."

"He's been the best gift you could have sent Doctor." Sarah said looking down at the robot.

A gift he knew he had not sent yet, he had never seen. A gift from his future, yet Sarah's past.

"K9." He mused.

"Yes Master." The robot said, seemingly happy to be recognised by him.

"And you found him did you?" He asked.

"In the attic in Croydon, he'd been in a box for ages till Aunt Lavina found it and left it for me."

He noted this information for the future.

* * *

They spoke for some time, of the others he'd known, travelled with. Of Harry Sullivan, of the Brigadier, now in Geneva heading up UNIT's operations that weren't related to the _prawns_.

Then it came to a pause in their conversation, a time to leave.

He unlocked the door and looked to her, to Sarah Jane Smith.

"Would you like to try again, Sarah Jane?" He asked smiling.

-/

"Would you like to try again, Sarah Jane?" He asked, the man who'd not changed. Time had not passed as it had for her.

To travel in the TARDIS, the possibilities. But she had a life, a family, a home here.

There was also the possibility that he might leave her, _again_. Perhaps not even in Croydon, somewhere more dangerous.

-/

She was tempted, but as she saw the blue box disappear from the mound she knew he'd run into someone to travel with, as she'd found someone to make a life with.

_A/N:_

_I've had this story sitting half finished on my computer for a while and just remembered I'd never finished it until now. _

_I've added hover to K9 because in the situations he'd be in during this scenario / universe he'd be unworkable._

_I'd intended at one point to write this entirely from the Doctor's perspective or do half from the Doctor's half from Sarah's, but how the story comes together doesn't quite lend itself to that format. As I need to dump a fair amount of info to explain the world and how Sarah and K9 fit into it._


End file.
